That’s great and all. But when will the price come down and the timetables improve?
Its 3.5 hours and $70 to go from Portland to Seattle on Amtrak versus 2.75 hours and $20 in gas to go by car and then you’ll also have your car with you to get around Seattle. It’s no wonder nobody takes the train anywhere here.
I take it all the time, and I’d like to see those gas numbers now that we’re at $6 a gallon.
I’m also really tired of the “its so slow” when that entire time you can read, sleep, or even drink if you want to. Personally I bring my deck and play video gamrs. Yeah it’s half hour longer, a half hour where I’m not stressed, worried about people swerving around me, needing to pay attention.
Gas isn’t $6 a gallon here, I just filled up yesterday for $4.55/gal in the metro area.
Being able to read, drink, or sleep during the ride doesn’t counteract the fact that it’s slow as that’s still a couple hours more that you’ll be spending on the transportation portion of the trip rather than at your desired destination.
Even if you do use it frequently, I don’t see how you couldn’t want the ride to be faster or offer literally any empirical advantage over driving. The benefit of reduced stress that you listed could be accomplished by having someone else drive you there too and it would be faster and even cheaper.
Advocating/settling for complete mediocrity in public transit is exactly why it sucks here.
Who says I’m settling for it? It for sure could be faster, I’d love HSR but that’s not going to happen tomorrow, that’s going to be a generational task. In the meantime, yes I’ll advocate for what transit we do have, because the more people who ride will convince more to take it. There’s a reason that 10 years ago we had 2 daily roundtrips to Portland and now we have 6, with new traincars coming end of month. It’s because people started riding so they invested in it. You don’t get investment by ignoring it.
Being able to read, drink, or sleep during the ride doesn’t counteract the fact that it’s slow as that’s still a couple hours more that you’ll be spending on the transportation portion of the trip rather than at your desired destination.
That is an opinion. My opinion is that I would much rather have 3 hours to read or sleep than to have 2.5 hours in a stressful drive. Driving is not fun, I find it stressful and annoying. My opinion is that my time is better spent relaxing on a train reading or playing video games, I get nothing out of a drive.
The benefit of reduced stress that you listed could be accomplished by having someone else drive you there too
That is quite literally what the train is, I’m having someone else drive me there.
Always happy to see improvements in rail. I’ve started taking the train more and it’s really quite nice.
